Thursday, April 28, 2016

This post was written by library volunteer Gail Denisoff.If doctors told you that outdoor life could help your
children who are having health issues, would you take that to mean walking from
Schenectady to San Francisco?That is
what the Fenton Family of Schenectady set out to do.Physicians told Mr. and Mrs. Reuben Fenton
that their son Gilbert, 18, and two of their other children considered to be in
failing health would benefit from spending time outside.The family decided that the warm air of the
Pacific Coast would be the best place for their children and began to plan
their trip.

The Fenton Family as they set off on their trip to San Francisco. Courtesy of the
Wayne Tucker Postcard Collection at the Grems-Doolittle Library.

The nine members of the family left city life behind and set
off on their cross country adventure to follow the Sunset Trail to San
Francisco on May 1st, 1913.They planned to walk across the state to Buffalo and follow the southern
shore of Lake Erie to Chicago.From
there they would head south on the Sunset, or Santa Fe route.They expected to reach Kansas City by fall
and spend the winter there.In the
spring, they would set off again to La Junta Colorado then south to Las Vegas
and Phoenix before heading west to Los Angeles and finally north to San
Francisco.Mr. Fenton estimated that
they would average 15 to 20 miles a day and the trip could take up to two years.

The trip would be made in a typical Prairie Schooner or
“Watson Wagon” pulled by a single horse until reaching Buffalo. There, they
would supplant the horse with a team.The schooner was six feet wide and ten feet long.Under the wagon was a suspended wooden box
containing the tools needed for the trip.They carried two tents for sleeping, a cooking stove and provisions
enough to carry them from one city to the next.The family dressed in the western ranch style of the day.The Fentons had postcards made of themselves
with their wagon and depended on the sale of the cards for their livelihood
along the way. One of these postcards can be found in the Wayne Tucker postcard
collection. On both sides of the wagon
were signs reading “The Fenton Family. Walking from Schenectady NY to San
Francisco California May 1st, 1913. We are dependent on the sale of post
cards and books for our living.”

﻿﻿﻿

Article/advertisement of Taniac, a cure-all.
Gilbert Fenton Is quoted in the article saying
"Off and on for eight years I have been
bothered with rheumatism...Taniac gave
me very good relief." Courtesy of OldFulton NY Postcards.

The family consisted of Reuben and Lottie Fenton and their
children: Henry, 23; Edgar, 20; Gilbert, 18; Ruth, 15; Helen, 8; Sidney, 7 and
Marguerite, 5. They also had a dog that went along for the journey.According to the rules of the family, the
menfolk would walk all the way but Mrs. Fenton and the children could ride
“according to their pleasure”.At night,
Mr. and Mrs. Fenton and they four youngest children would sleep in the wagon
and the older boys would tent alongside.

Did the family reach San Francisco?We don’t know for sure but assume not.There is a newspaper article from the Geneva
Daily Times dated June 5, 1913 reporting the family reached Waterloo NY and
were still traveling.No other
documentation can be found of them reaching another destination.However, an article from the May 24, 1917
Schenectady Gazette has a still ailing Gilbert working at
GE and promoting a product that helped his rheumatism and stomach.Another article has family members attending
Edgar’s 31st birthday party in Schenectady in 1924. Reuben, Lottie
and their children Sidney and Margaret were living in Albany at the time of the
1920 census and he was working as a machinist at General Electric, a job he
also held in 1910 according to that census.Two members of the family did eventually move west.The 1930 census finds Edgar and his wife,
Irma, living in Detroit.Gilbert and his
wife, Tressa, lived with them as boarders and the two brothers both worked as
machinists in an auto parts factory.Similar to the Fenton family were three young men who named themselves the Schaugh-naugh-ta-da Hiking Trio. They set out on a trip from Schenectady to Chicago on September 18, 1911. Much less is known about the trio than the Fenton family, but we do have a postcard of them taken before they set out on their journey.

Postcard of the Schaugh-naugh-ta-da hiking trio before they left from
Schenectady's City Hall on September 18, 1911. Courtesy of the
Wayne Tucker Postcard Collection at the Grems-Doolittle Library.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

This post was written by library volunteer Gail Denisoff.Richard Strevell and Raymond Borden liked to paddle.In the winter of 1907, they paddled 900 miles
through the lake country of Florida in a 16 foot canoe.In 1908 they decided to go big.They set their sights on an 18 month voyage
in the same canoe leaving from Schenectady. Strevell, 28, was a machinist at General Electric, living on
Congress Street.Borden, 23, was a
painter living on South Ferry Street.They were described as “hardy young men all ready for the occasion”
which they would have to be for what they had planned.

Richard Strevell and Raymond Borden getting ready for their trip. Courtesy of the
Wayne Tucker Postcard Collection at the Grems-Doolittle Library.

At 3pm on Monday, August 3rd, 1908, over 1000
people witnessed their departure by way of the Erie Canal.To help finance their trip, they sold
“postals” of themselves with their canoe, one of which made its way into the
Wayne Tucker postcard collection. Their canoe was 16 feet long and made of cedar and
canvas.It had a 33 inch beam and
weighed 600 pounds loaded, including Strevell and Borden, 51 pounds unloaded. In the space between the beams was a
watertight compartment for groceries and provisions.They filled every available nook and cranny
with items needed for the trip including complete camping and cooking outfits. From
either end of the canoe, pennants of the Old Fort Club waved in the breeze.

Their itinerary was ambitious.They would start off for Buffalo by way of
the Erie Canal.From there, they would
paddle inside the breakwaters of Lake Erie to the St. Clair River to Lake
Michigan.Then they would travel up the
lakes as far as Green Bay Wisconsin, taking the Fox River then the Wisconsin
River inland, eventually reaching Oklahoma by December where they would winter
on a ranch in Oatka.This leg of the
journey would be 4000 miles.﻿﻿

The Union Street bridge over the Erie Canal where you could have lined up
to watch our ambitious paddlers row their way towards Oklahoma.
Courtesy of the Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection

Once navigation opened again, they planned another 6000 mile
odyssey.They would take the Arkansas
River and drainage canals to the Mississippi and then head south to New
Orleans.From there they would paddle to
Key West through the Gulf of Mexico and then cruise up the Atlantic just inside
the breakwater to New York.They would
then go up the Hudson River to Albany returning to Schenectady by way of the
Erie Canal in early 1910. They said the trip was for “pleasure and recreation”.

Did they make it?We
don’t know.Newspaper reports have them
arriving in Buffalo on August 21st.In Buffalo, they hooked up with William Adams who had canoed there from
Boston with a friend who abandoned the journey at that point.They were also intent on reaching New
Orleans. The next mention of the trio is from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, not part
of their original itinerary.They must
have rethought their route and taken waterways south, most likely the Alleghany
River, from Lake Erie.While in
Pittsburgh, they were seeking advice from local river pilots on streams to be
traversed and general conditions of various routes.They told a local reporter that they camped
along river ways at night and by hunting and fishing for food were able to hold
their expenses down to 25 cents a day for each man.They secured money through sales of their
postcards and “by any means offered en route”.They planned to travel west on the Ohio River from Pennsylvania and a
fourth man was expected to join their party further down the river.

From there, the trail goes cold.No other articles have been found to ascertain
whether they completed their journey.A
small notice in the Schenectady Gazette finds Richard Strevell visiting his cousin
in Schenectady in 1913 from his home in Iowa.Did he paddle there?His 1918
World War I draft card has him living in Seminole, Florida with fishing listed
as his profession.He stayed in Florida
for the rest of his life. He was a school bus driver according to the 1930
census and a store merchant at age 60 on the 1940 census.Sometime between 1930 and 1940 he married
Florence who worked with him in their store.He died in Florida in 1964 at age 84.I haven’t been able to locate any information as to what became of
Raymond Borden but we will keep looking!

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Advertisement for the King Bros. at Proctor's theater
from 1913. Courtesy of Fulton History.

The family of Wayne Tucker recently donated a vast postcard
collection to the Grems-Doolittle Library.Mr. Tucker's collection consists mainly of postcards related to the city
of Schenectady and Schenectady County.There are cards of familiar landmarks as well as of those of places
which no longer exist. As one of the volunteers who has been indexing the
collection, I can only begin to imagine the time, effort and expense involved
for Mr. Tucker to amass this collection.My work has often been slowed as I've read a message from someone or
pondered an image on a card.In the
early 1900's postcards were not only a way to get a message to a loved one, but
were used to chronicle blizzards, floods, accidents, fires and events of the
day.People could go to local
photography studios to have portraits taken and made into postcards to send to
friends and family far away.They were
used in advertising, to announce events as well as to showcase the sights of
the city.I hope to use this space to
share some of the interesting and odd postcards that I have come across in this
collection.

Postcard of the King Brothers from the Wayne Tucker Postcard Collection at the
Grems-Doolittle Library.

First up is a postcard advertising The King Brothers,
Herculean Comedy Athletes.These two
young men were neither brothers nor named King.They were both from Schenectady and ran off to join the Ringling
Brothers Circus early in the 1900's.They later found fame and hopefully fortune on the vaudeville circuit of
the teens and 1920's. Their real names were Thomas Traver and Robert Shank and
they performed hand and head balancing feats, contortion work and “tumbling
with a sensational finish”. Their shows also contained a generous dose of
comedy.Newspapers of the day have them
performing on Hippodrome stages from Spokane Washington to Atlanta Georgia
where they shared the stage with Will Rogers.They combined feats of strength with playful fun and reportedly were
featured in Ripley's Believe it or Not.An advertisement from October 1913 finds them closer to home performing
at the Proctor's theater in Mechanicville.I'm sure many of their local family and friends were there in the
audience to cheer them on. Unfortunately, there isn't much information to be
found about what became of Thomas and Robert. On the back of this postcard,
someone noted that they served and died in the first World War.Since the Sacramento Union advertised their
upcoming performance at the Sacramento Hippodrome in February of 1921, and the
Troy Times had them at Proctors's Theatre in Troy in November of 1922, rumors
of their demise were a bit premature!

Advertisement for the King Bros. at Proctor's theater from 1922.
Courtesy of Fulton History.

Thanks to The Oldtime Strongman Blog and Fulton History for
information.